Cambrian has long been famous: it is in the "window" of artificial intelligence, but it rarely appears in public, and it is regarded as a low-key "doer". However, due to the excellent products and high industrial status, it is inevitable to mention CAMBRIAN when talking about AI chips. Just as its name has pioneering significance in geological times, CAMBRIAN is the pioneer of domestic AI chips.
For the capital market, the Cambrian listing means that the evaluation criteria of "excellent enterprises" in the registration system of science and technology innovation board are diversified, which means that innovative species begin to take root in the domestic capital market. In CAMBRIAN, listing is not an end, but a means to the public, which is conducive to the realization of lofty goals and thus attracts more talents to join. Undoubtedly, one of the most important capitals for innovative enterprises to enter the sea of stars is talent.
"We are ambitious, but the long-distance running has just begun." In the past three years, the revenue has increased by 50 times, with 4 billion cash, which is in the window of opportunity for "new infrastructure". As its founder Chen said, Cambrian stood at the starting point of a great journey, and the future is a blue ocean.
Investors come to science and technology innovation board AI chip leading stocks.
On March 20 16, Chen founded CAMBRIAN, and in March 2020, Shanghai Stock Exchange accepted the listing application of CAMBRIAN science and technology innovation board. In the past four years, hard science and technology star enterprises went to public investors through the registration system.
Although it has not been established for a long time, the CAMBRIAN has a deep foundation, and its technology and product performance are at the world's leading level. According to the brokerage research report, CAMBRIAN is one of the few enterprises in the world that have fully mastered the core technologies of software development and productization of smart chips and their basic systems. With the leading core technology, the company realized the productization of many technologies earlier, and the specially designed general intelligent chip architecture reached the advanced level in the industry.
Cambrian is in a period of rapid development. The annual operating income of 20 17, 20 18 and 20 19 is 7,843,300 yuan, 170,000 yuan, 444 million yuan, 20 18 and 20 19 respectively.
According to the prospectus, the CAMBRIAN publicly issued 406,543,800 shares, accounting for 65,438+00.02% of the company's total issued share capital, which is not large in scale. The CAMBRIAN financing is 2.58 billion yuan, mainly from sponsors, investment subsidiaries and other strategic investors, the latter including Lenovo (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Midea Holdings Co., Ltd. and OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd., all of which are large enterprises and their subsidiaries with strategic cooperative relationship or long-term cooperative vision with CAMBRIAN.
Compared with chip companies with a long history such as SMIC, the successful listing of CAMBRIAN started the successful listing of registered hard technology unicorn company, which stirred up a pool of spring water.
For a long time, the A-share market has strict and fixed auditing standards, which makes some innovative technology enterprises unable to land in the A-share market and seek a more "tolerant" market environment like Nasdaq. However, some A-share listed companies, although their profitability reached the standard at the time of listing, have many examples of their performance "changing face" after listing and their subsequent development is weak, which is not what investors want to see.
Jed doesn't take the current profitability as the only criterion. How to retain a potential great enterprise? The establishment and registration of science and technology innovation board has become a turning point that people generally expect. Although CAMBRIAN has not yet made a profit, its main product performance is on a par with the main competitors at home and abroad such as ARM, NVIDIA, Intel, Huawei Hisilicon, and some indicators are even ahead of competitors, showing strong development potential.
Long-distance runners "catch big fish with long lines"
The funds raised in CAMBRIAN are mainly used for a new generation of cloud training chips and systems, a new generation of cloud reasoning chips and systems, a new generation of edge artificial intelligence chips and systems, and supplementary liquidity.
Since its establishment, CAMBRIAN has rapidly realized the industrial output of technology, and successively launched CAMBRIAN 1A, CAMBRIAN 1H, CAMBRIAN 1M series chips for terminal scenes, cloud smart accelerator card series products based on Siyuan 100 and Siyuan 270 chips, and edge smart accelerator card based on Siyuan 220 chips.
In 20 17 CAMBRIAN, Huawei Hisilicon was authorized to use 1A processor IP and installed on Huawei Mate 10 mobile phone, becoming the world's first AI mobile phone chip. Siyuan series products are also used in the products of many server manufacturers such as Inspur and Lenovo, and Siyuan 270 chip won the 6th world internet conference Leading Science and Technology Achievement Award. As of February 29th, 2020, CAMBRIAN has authorized 65 patents at home and abroad, and PCT patent application 120.
Among the start-ups of artificial intelligence chip design, CAMBRIAN is one of the few companies that have achieved successful product development and large-scale application, which is also the result of their large-scale investment in research and development. According to the prospectus, the R&D expenditure in Cambrian from 20 17 to 20 19 was 30 million yuan, 240 million yuan and 543 million yuan respectively, and the R&D investment income accounted for more than 100% for three consecutive years, which was at a high level in the industry. At present, there are 680 R&D personnel in CAMBRIAN * *, accounting for 79.25% of the total employees, and more than 60% have master's degree or above.
It is not uncommon for chip companies to invest as much in R&D as in Cambrian-chip companies need a lot of money for design and flow, and "burning money" is the same attribute of chip companies. According to the general process, chip research and development not only costs a lot of money, but also takes a long time. The finished products need to be "designed in" to get customers' response and support, and then they can enter the income-generating stage of large-scale shipment.
Hard technology companies are essentially different from internet companies, which is first reflected in the cycle of recovering R&D costs. But it is more important to see that once the chip company succeeds in R&D, the moat will be difficult to be easily surpassed, so the return will be as huge and long-term as the R&D investment.
The "efficiency" of R&D investment has become the key to success. Chen once said: "The trajectory of the chip is the speed of producing products, and the products are good or not." Cambrian entered the track earlier, but fortunately it took the lead and the products were recognized by customers. R&D efficiency has been verified by the market. Established for four years, CAMBRIAN will introduce and iterate new products every year. Compared with other foreign chip design companies and A-share listed chip design companies, the research and development capability of CAMBRIAN is outstanding. Compared with the average gross profit rate of science and technology innovation board enterprises of 53.49%, the CAMBRIAN comprehensive gross profit rate is also higher than the average level.
However, the race to the great chip company is long, and there is a greater demand for long-distance runners. Investors also need to establish a "long-term fishing for big fish" investment mentality. CAMBRIAN frankly stated in the prospectus that the losses will continue for some time, which is also the normal growth process of chip companies. In particular, AI chip is the engine of artificial intelligence industry and the link with the highest technical requirements and added value. In order to "catch bigger fish" in the future, the Cambrian must continue to develop and iterate quickly, and patient investors will enjoy the greatest benefits.
The ecological path of AI chip leader's "horizontal length"
When some start-ups are struggling to survive on a chip, Cambrian has made a chip, which is the accumulation of advantages of "leaders".
The CAMBRIAN business is roughly divided into four parts: intelligent computing cluster, AI reasoning chip, ip authorization and AI training chip. Among them, the first three businesses generated 296 million yuan, 78.88 million yuan and 68.77 million yuan respectively in 20 19, with gross profit margins of 58.23%, 78.23% and 99.77% respectively. The fourth part of the commercial AI training chip is the technical commanding heights. The product was launched in 2020, and it is expected to generate revenue in 20021year.
The cooperation with Huawei is one of the famous factors of CAMBRIAN, which proves the reliability of CAMBRIAN products, and Huawei chose the road of self-research, which also proves the importance of AI chip as a track.
The research report shows that the demand for AI smart chips in the consumer electronics market in 2020 includes smart phones, AR/ VR, drones and so on. It is expected to reach $26 1 1 billion, and intelligent driving is expected to bring broader market demand. IDC predicts that the smart chip market corresponding to cloud reasoning and training will grow from $2.6 billion in 20 17 to $3.6 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 39.22%. ABI Research Company predicts that the market size of edge smart chips will increase from $2.6 billion in 20 19 to $7.6 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.93%.
For CAMBRIAN, friendly competition with Huawei is conducive to long-term development. At present, the proportion of sales to a single customer has not exceeded 50% of the total sales of CAMBRIAN company. From the changes of income structure in Cambrian, it can be seen that 99% of its income in 20 17-20 18 came from the IP authorization business of terminal intelligent processor, and in 20 19, it added the business income of cloud intelligent chip, accelerator card and intelligent computing cluster system, and its business became diversified.
The orientation of CAMBRIAN is a neutral and independent chip enterprise, taking the route of ecological development. Now, after four years of development, three product lines of CAMBRIAN "Yunyuan" have been completed and will continue to be iteratively upgraded. In the future, CAMBRIAN will build a unique ecology, like NVIDIA and other enterprises, extending to many sub-sectors such as transportation, education and medical care.
"The role of cloud edge integration is to make developers worry and save effort, and let us worry and save effort. Cloud edge integration means that chips deployed in different scenarios have a unified instruction set and architecture in the hardware layer and a unified application development environment in the software layer. This can reduce the cost for companies and developers to develop different kinds of chips, which is an important part of our ecological strategy. " Chen said when introducing the business structure of CAMBRIAN.
In the era of artificial intelligence, new giants are growing, and the Cambrian is undoubtedly the seed player. With more than 4 billion yuan in cash reserves and 2.5 billion yuan in raised funds, CAMBRIAN is undoubtedly one of the more powerful AI computing chip start-ups, which is the basis for consolidating its advantages. Facing the journey, CAMBRIAN holds mature and leading products and the embryonic form of ecology, and the blue ocean is ahead, just waiting to ride the wind and waves. Text/Hui Jin
National business daily